Powerless
by The Serial Dabbler
Summary: Everyone Ellie has ever cared about has either died or left her; so when she's faced with make or break circumstances; will she be by Joel's side powerless? Or will she chase it to the end? *Chapter: Winter spoilers!


A/N: _'Joel? Ah shit. Get up, get up, get up…You gotta tell me what to do. Come on. You gotta get up. Joel?' – Ellie._

*Warning: Contains spoilers for The Last Of Us - Chapter: Winter…including this, effectively means that I am no longer liable for ruining _anything _in relation to this for _anyone._

Everyone Ellie has ever cared about has either died or left her; so when she's faced with make or break circumstances; will she be by his side powerless? Or will she chase it to the end?

This is the first game I've played in _ages…_man, couldn't have picked a better one for a come back. I've also not written anything for a while but I thought I'd give this a whirl.

Rated T: For obvious reasons, _mostly_ swearing.

Disclaimer: I own nothing that bores any resemblance whatsoever to The Last Of Us. Naughty Dog are the geniuses behind it all.

Powerless

The first few days after Joel's accident, after she had managed to somehow shift him back on the horse and then into what she had thought was an abandoned town, she doesn't know what to do, what to say to him.

She has to concentrate on breathing slowly when she pulls him from the horse, ignoring how hard it is to move him on her own, as she half carries; half drags him into one of the more stable looking houses.

She doesn't know what to do, and if she's honest with herself and lets go of the bravado for a second she could really do with Joel's help right about now. The only good thing is that she's not stupid, there's still a lot of blood, and she's _fucked_ if she knows how much he's lost at this point.

…Too much.

So that's the priority…Stop the bleeding. She'll worry about comfort later.

She grabs his pack and rummages through it, various scraps they've managed to collect tumbling out as she does and pulls out a bottle of alcohol, the cleanest looking shirt, and his med pack. She counts herself lucky when she finds a needle and thread.

Using the shirt to mop up most of the blood, she tries to stem the flow enough to get a decent look at the wound.

It looks bad but Marlene's looked pretty bad too and she made it through, right?

Patching him up isn't easy and although he passed out some time ago, he moves around while she's trying to stitch him up, and she's not strong enough to hold him down.

She does the best she can, trying to block out the painful moans coming from him as she digs the needle mercilessly into his flesh as she knits him back together. It hurts now but if it's not done properly he'll be dead pretty _fucking_ soon.

When he's finally laid out on the mattress, covered over with whatever blankets she could scourge together, she falls to the floor beside him, head pillowed on her backpack and feels the bile rise up in her throat and the traitorous sting of tears behind her eyes.

But Ellie doesn't cry.

Because she's frightened that if she does she won't be able to stop.

And she can't afford to fall apart.

Instead she buries her face in her backpack, trying to blot out the world and everything that's caused so much _shit _lately. It would be better if she could just stop thinking about it. So, she listens to the sound of Joel's short, shallow breaths and although they sound laboured and unsure, it makes her feel better just to know he's still alive.

Days seemed to bleed into weeks and before long Ellie finds it hard to remember how long they've been held up in that small, damp house. She feels sick every time she leaves to go hunting, because she's afraid that Joel will be dead by the time she gets back.

But she goes anyway, because Joel's been teaching her how to survive and although she might not like it, they needed to eat and they were running low on cans. It's not a great haul at first, and it takes her longer than she wants to admit to stumble across that rabbit and for one, brief moment as she ties it to Callous' saddle she despondently considers going back.

Until she spots a buck just beyond the tree line.

She hits it, three times over and she really can't believe it's still alive.

The buck's got some fire in him and it becomes pretty clear that he's not going down without a fight. So she tails it across the bloodied snow and while she knows it's not the smartest thing to do, she's _fucking_ hungry and Joel can't fend off an infection on a half can of beans.

She realises too late that she should have just let it run.

"_We just want to talk." _

Two men. David and James. Like names make this entire encounter friendlier. What the hell is in a name anyways? Like introductions count for anything when you're the one holding the bow. David mentions women and children and although Ellie doesn't believe him, she latches onto the words and throws them back in his face, because she definitely doesn't want them to know it's just her and Joel.

"_Well…maybe we could ah, trade you? For some of that meat there." _

She doesn't like the look of these two and as far as she's concerned they can have the sodding buck. She just wants out.

"_What'd you need? Weapons, ammo, clothes -"_

"_Medicine!"_

The words slip unbridled from her tongue before she has chance to think about them. And she hates that they sound _desperate_, even though she knows she is; she's never let herself dwell on it. She takes a deep breath and tries again with a little more confidence.

"_Do you have any antibiotics?"_

They do and Ellie feels lighter than she has in a long while at the mere prospect of it. This was good, this was the stroke of blind luck she hadn't admitted to herself she was hoping for. Without Joel to front it all, she's suddenly the one giving orders and all that does is make her miss him that much more. But she stands strong and sees it through because at the moment it's all on her and she'll be damned if she fails him.

"_Two bottles of the penicillin and a syringe. Make it quick." _

She can't help but feel some sort of relief when James scurries off with his tail between his legs.

Things pass in a bit of a blur after that and Ellie can't remember much about the battle that fell on them. Just that there were moments where she'd thought, however brief, that she might not make it, before she shook it off and fired another round…and how David wasn't as good in a jam as Joel was. She tells herself she'll let him know how much she appreciates having him around when he's back to his old self.

"_I'd say we make a pretty good team."_

"_Psshh. We got lucky." _

She couldn't wait to get out of there, even as she settled down stiffly to wait on those antibiotics. What the _fuck_ was taking that guy so long? David was talking, Ellie wasn't paying too much attention to what he was saying, more interested in watching the line of the windows for shadows and his slow, deliberate movements that seemed too practiced to be natural.

"_Now, this winter has been especially cruel. A few weeks back, I ah…sent a group of men out, nearby town to look for food. Only a few came back. They said that the others had been ah…slaughtered by a crazy man. And get this; he's a crazy man travelling with a little girl."_

Red flashed across her vision, her ears rung and she was on her feet, rifle locked into her shoulder as she kept it lined with his face. He kept talking but she could barely make out the words, and although he still appeared calm and steady, he'd purposefully made himself a threat.

"_You're just a kid."_

She might've been a kid but she could still put a bullet right between his eyes.

David was looking past her now and when she turned, she came face to face with James at the door, his return long overdue, and when he lowered his gun, he tossed the bottles at her feet. She scooped them up with quick, jerky movements, her body betraying how much she wanted to be away from them.

She bolted, as soon as she had the chance, ploughing through the snow and cutting corners wherever she could. When she finally reached Callous, she was on his back before she'd fully unhooked his reigns, urging him faster along the path, glancing over her shoulder, even though they'd made no attempt to follow her.

Slamming the garage door shut behind her, she pulled herself together and left Callous upstairs, hurrying down to the basement. The tension in her shoulders, the rigidity in her back and nervous air didn't truly leave her until she saw Joel, lying where she'd left him that morning.

But it was short lived because he looked pale and feverish and from where she stood it didn't look like he was breathing, though she couldn't seem to force her feet to move any closer.

For one, horrible, torturous second she thought he was dead.

She'd spent so much time thinking about getting back that she hadn't really thought about how long she'd been gone.

He left out a gruff puff of air, visible in the cold and it was almost as if it breathed the life back into her as well. Pulled from whatever had grasped her before, she was at his side, speaking to him, hands gentle on his body as she checked him over. Her hands didn't shake, like she half-expected them too, when she gave him the injection, but in the next breath she was apologising for causing him pain.

"_Sorry. All done. That's it. You're going to make it."_

Ellie still wasn't sure who she was trying to reassure.

She pulls the covers back over him and lays down by the mattress, head pillowed on her backpack, much like she had done that first night and every night that followed. Hand stretching out to rest on his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall of it beneath her fingers.

She'd always told Joel that she didn't need babysitting, but after all this she'd had her eyes opened to how much she relies on him.

…She was going to show him that he could rely on her as well.

As she was drifting off into what had long become exhausted sleep Ellie spares a thought to David; to words that she'd been quick to dismiss. He'd said he believed everything happened for a reason and now she really thought about it perhaps there was some truth in it? Maybe it was just the phrasing that was off? It wasn't that everything happened for a reason…

…It was that actions had _fucking_ consequences.

_You hid your skeletons when I had shown you mine  
__You woke the devil that I thought you'd left behind  
__I saw the evidence, the crimson soaking through.  
_

_I watched you fall apart and chased you to the end  
__I'm left with emptiness that cannot defend  
__You'll never know what I became because of you  
__Ten thousands promise, ten thousand ways to lose._

_And you held it all but you were careless to let it fall  
__You held it all and I was by your side,  
_

_Powerless. _

Lyrics courtesy of Linkin Park.

A/N: Review? Yay or Nay? Jury's still out on that one.


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